1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light guide plate, a method of manufacturing the same, and a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) device including the same, and, more particularly, to a light guide plate emitting light with uniform brightness, a method of manufacturing the light guide plate, and an LCD device including the light guide plate.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an LCD device displays an image using a liquid crystal. The liquid crystal has electrical characteristics in which the alignment is changed according to the direction and intensity of an electric field, and optical characteristics in which the light transmittance is changed according to the alignment.
FIG. 1 is a plan view of a conventional LCD device in which the positions of test points for measuring brightness are shown.
The LCD device includes a liquid crystal panel 10 and a backlight unit. The liquid crystal panel 10 displays an image using light and a backlight unit provides the light to the liquid crystal panel 10.
The liquid crystal panel 10 includes a color filter substrate including a color filter array, a thin film transistor (“TFT”) substrate including a TFT array, and a liquid crystal disposed between the two substrates. The backlight unit includes a light source generating light, such as lamp 28, a light guide plate guiding the light from the light source to the liquid crystal panel 10, and a plurality of optical sheets.
The backlight unit is formed on the rear surface of the liquid crystal panel 10 to provide light to the liquid crystal panel 10. In the conventional backlight unit, the amount of emitted light is reduced as a distance increases from the lamp 28 as the light source. Accordingly, there occurs a defect such as a bright line in which the region adjacent to the lamp 28 is displayed brighter than the periphery in an effective display area displaying an image. That is, as shown in FIG. 2, test points 1, 6, 11, 16 and 21 positioned at the right side of the liquid crystal panel 10 and test points 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 positioned at the left side of the liquid crystal panel 10 have brightness lower than test points in the center of the display area, such as test points 3, 8, 13, 18, and 23.
Moreover, in the case where the lamp 28 is used as the light source, there occurs a phenomenon in which the brightness measured at an opposite surface such as test points 16, 20, 21 and 25 is further lowered.